Articles from Vol. 55, No. 2, Spring

"We need to encourage the role of `commandos'--not in a military sense, but in the civil realm. We need a small group of individuals who can operate within institutions but also take personal responsibility for their actions and decisions." Modern...

"Both ASEAN and the OAS were active, flexible and effective in the peace processes in Cambodia and Haiti. Although the UN Security Council and major powers made the final settlement for both conflicts, the contributions of the two organizations...

"... prevention and rebuilding are inextricably linked at the societal level, leading to the conclusion that a formal agreement ending a civil war is meaningless unless coupled with long-term programs to heal the wounded society." The engagement...

"Peacekeeping itself cannot bring a final resolution of conflict; but it can help create conditions for political leaders to forge a lasting settlement."--Richard Holbrooke (1) "Outside interventions are typically more effective when third parties...

"If it's done well, the marginal cost of peacekeeping will yield a greater peace dividend to both the country in conflict and the wider international community." The 1990s could be called the decade of peacekeeping. The number and variety of...

"But then peace, peace! I am so mistrustful of it: so much afraid that it means a sort of weakness and giving in." --D.H. Lawrence We're a bit more optimistic about the prospects for peace than Lawrence was, but his comment implies issues inherent...

"The hour of Europe in enforcing, keeping and building peace seems to have come and gone ... Europe failed to demonstrate its independence as badly as it failed at everything in the first few years of its Balkan engagement. But that failure has...

"The unequivocal effect of the media is not to change or even shift policy, but to influence its timing--and especially to compress the time available for making policy decisions." In 1999, Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Mark Bowden published...

"The international business community will increasingly need to promote greater economic inclusion and social justice in its operations, or it will be blamed for contributing to the conditions that lead to violent conflict." It is not a coincidence...

"The failure of peace operations in Africa can only be partly attributed to the agents or modalities of these operations. Such operations fail because they attempt to avert the collapse of illegitimate, rapacious and coercive states." Increasingly,...

"The international community can and must do better. Rather than thinking in terms of a 5,000-person UN force, the international community should develop capacity to deploy at least 100,000 more troops abroad." Several hundred thousand people...

Peacekeeping is a blurry business, often as opaque as war itself. Since the end of the Cold War, conflicts increasingly lack a defined line between the warring sides. Simply maintaining peace can be a far greater challenge than reaching a ceasefire....

"... true enforcement [is] not the pretend variety that comes with soldiers in blue berets who have neither the capacity nor the wit to do anything about the breaches of international law occurring around them." At the height of the Sierra Leone...

"If the mistakes of the last decade are to be avoided, governments and international organizations will have to adopt a new mindset, one that focuses on the prevention of conflict. In this new culture of prevention, development cooperation will...

Interviewed on 20 December 2001 by Shireen Khan Journal: It has been more than a year since the Brahimi Panel report was published. Which recommendations from the report have been implemented? What is your view on the implementation of those ...